Rescued Jewish Children

     Asia Eliyashevich (later Berger) was born in Kaunas in 1942, into the family of Solomon and Leah Eliyashevich. Like most Lithuanian Jews, the family suffered under the Nazi regime's repressions. After the Children's Action in the Šiauliai Ghetto, the Elijaševičius family feared that their young daughter in the Kaunas Ghetto might face a similar fate. Searching for a way to save her, they turned to acquaintances for help.
     Berta Shmuilovich, a former classmate of Leah‘s from medical school, contacted Valė Marčiulionienė, who worked as a nurse at a Kaunas orphanage. Valė and her husband Jurgis lived in Kaunas and were childless. Upon hearing about the young girl whose life was in danger, the Marčiulionis family agreed to take Asia in, but with one condition: if the girl's parents did not survive, they would raise her as their own daughter, a Lithuanian and a Catholic.
     In early 1944, Asia was secretly brought to the Marčiulionis household. Her name was changed to Aldona, and neighbors were told that she was Valė’s niece, whose mother was ill and unable to care for her. The dark-haired little girl quickly grew attached to her new guardians, who loved and cared for her as if she were their own daughter. Occasionally, Valė met Berta in the city to share news about the girl.
     As the Red Army approached Kaunas, the Germans began liquidating the ghetto – the remaining few hundred prisoners were loaded into cattle cars bound for the West. Asia's mother, Leah Elijashevich, managed to escape from the train platform and hid for several days until the Nazis retreated.
     In late August 1944, Leah contacted the Marčiulionis family, but it took her several months to find a job and a place to live. Only then was she able to reclaim her daughter. For the Marčiulionis family, who by this time considered the girl their own daughter, parting with her was difficult, but they returned her to her rightful mother.
     After the war, Leah learned that her husband Solomon had survived the Dachau concentration camp. The family reunited and spent several years in displaced persons camps in Germany while awaiting emigration visas. In 1951, they emigrated to the United States, where they began a new life.
     Asia Berger never saw her rescuers again, but her parents told her about Valė and Jurgis Marčiulionis – the people who had risked everything to save her life. On August 20, 2007, the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Israel recognized Valė and Jurgis Marčiulionis as Righteous Among the Nations.